It has been five years since I joined Grafana Labs. In my entire career, I have never worked at any company for this long. This is a new situation for me. Turns out, you can stay in the same company, with the same people, for years and still feel fulfillment, joy, and growth.

But it hasn’t all been rainbows, I had moments where I wondered if I was actually growing or just hanging around. So, I’ve been reflecting on the reality of staying put in a hyper-growth environment. To stay in a “cliché” zone, I thought to write 5 learnings and 5 challenges from the last years.

5 Learnings

1. You can’t cheat evolution: I see many startups today scaling to $100M revenue in six months with zero infrastructure or telemetry to sustain it. Then they hit the wall. You can cheat many things, but you can’t cheat evolution. It takes time to mature. Time works for you, but only if you let it. Scaling isn’t a magic trick; it requires repetition, mistakes, and corrections.

2. The ROI of people: I always knew the theory, but seeing it play out in real life is different. People are the most expensive investment and the biggest return. Scaling from 4 to 1200 doesn’t happen without continuous investment in people. Grafana Labs is remote, but the level of care I’ve seen here restored my belief that corporations can actually be humanistic.

3. Diplomacy is not politics: We overuse the word “politics” so much that everything becomes politics. But that isn’t true. Politics is power-playing; diplomacy is navigating complexity in a way that preserves trust. Scaling organizations require the right diplomacy.

4. Community is the strategy: Customers and community are not “third parties” you occasionally interact with and need to sell a product. They are part of the strategy. Honestly, they are part of the family. Long-term success comes from a symbiosis of internal and external collaboration, thus you cannot build in a vacuum.

5. Your career is built, not given: No matter how supportive your environment is, no one will steer your career except you. The moments where I grew the most were the ones where I actively shaped my own path—changing scopes, redefining responsibilities, and asking for alignment. Your career does not “happen.” It is built, step by step, by you.

5 Challenges

1. The tectonic plates of scale: The complexity of scale sneaks up on you. At 200 people, everything feels manageable. At 800, invisible cracks appear. At 1200, the cracks turn into tectonic plates. Navigating that shift required relearning what “alignment” even means.

2. Emotional asymmetry: Remote work is incredible, but it is emotionally asymmetric. You don’t see people in the hallway. You don’t sense tension early. Sometimes you discover problems only when they are fully grown trees, not when they are seedlings. You have to work twice as hard to keep your finger on the pulse.

3. Uneven growth pace: The speed of growth means not everyone grows at the same pace. Some people outgrow their roles, some fall behind, and some freeze. Managing that dynamic in fair and humanly way is one of the hardest parts of leadership.

4. Adrenaline vs. Systems: The temptation to optimize for short-term output is always there. The industry chases “ship faster” and “deliver more.” But great teams don’t survive on adrenaline; they survive on systems. Resisting the adrenaline rush was often harder than embracing it.

5. Uncomfortable truths: Being honest about culture is uncomfortable. Every company has blind spots, and pointing at them can feel like poking the bear, but avoiding it only makes the culture smaller. Learning how to name uncomfortable truths without being destructive, that was the real challenge.

Here is to the next chapter. Grafana Labs here to stay! Also, we are almost always hiring